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“This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Terry Cleaver of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Kent and has been added to the website on behalf of Frederik J Jurriaanse with his permission and they fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Boschdijk 684, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 10 May 1940, approximately 7 a.m.

My parents woke my brother and me up. They looked serious and concerned. They told us calmly that we were at war. I could not comprehend. Where were the knights in armour on horseback, the mighty Crusaders, fighting the Heathens? Surely that was war I had always been told? My brother and I were taken to my parents’ bedroom, which overlooked the main road. I had been excited by the prospect of being allowed to play on the recently re-surfaced road, but was horrified to see it ruined. There were strange looking grey-green vehicles. They did not have wheels like the carts, carriages and cars I was used to seeing. These instead appeared to have other means of moving. They had no apparent windows, but huge tubes protruded from them, and other unusual attachments. Whatever they were, they had ruined MY road. They mostly stood still, row upon row, with men in grey clothes walking near them. These vehicles and the people with them, my parents told us, had invaded our country in the night, and we were no longer ‘free.’ As a boy not quite 5 years old, I could not possibly comprehend what it was all about. I was told to be careful and to stay indoors, or go into the garden at the back of the house.

Boshdijk 684, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 14 (?) September 1944, approximately 8.p.m.

Shooting, explosions, sirens. We were all in the confined space of the cellar during yet another air raid; my father, mother, 2 brothers, baby sister, godmother, maid, a stranger who sought refuge, and I. A single candle lit the tiny space. On the shelves were glass jars of preserves, carefully prepared by my mother and maids during the previous four years, encase we were REALLY hungry. There had been food rationing for a long time, but there were hardly anything in the shops. Black Market (hush-hush) was the only means of survival without attacking the preserves. However, we were not REALLY starving, so the mouth-watering preserves remained on the shelves. Not long before I was caught eating a raw turnip I had stolen from a field, my 4-year-old brother ‘stole’ a few drops of milk when he thought no one was looking.
My father told us a fairy tale for distraction, but the noise from outside was so deafening, we could hardly hear him. What happened next is difficult to describe. Terrific noise, complete confusion, screaming maid which I could hear in spite of sudden deafness, hysterical stranger; I was choked by rubble dust. It all happened so quickly. I cannot remember leaving the cellar, but I do recall my godmother helping me to scramble outside the cellar across a huge pile of rubble, which was the kitchen minutes before. I ran down the garden behind my mother who was carrying my sister. I saw aeroplanes alight in the sky, and heard bullets whistling through the air nearby.
Miraculously we all survived, but the back of the house had collapsed because of the bomb. All the preserves were ruined.

At present I am working as a volunteer in the tsunami attacked provinces in Thailand. It is difficult to determine what is worse: to live in surroundings devastated by one’s country’s enemy or in an area devastated by a wave? The results of both cause life-long nightmares.

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